the ground.

I first verified this observation some years ago. I had long been
familiar with the song, but had only strongly suspected the author of
it, when, as I was walking in the woods one evening, just as the
leaves were putting out, I saw one of these birds but a few rods from
me. I was saying to myself, half audibly, "Come, now, show off, if it
is in you; I have come to the woods expressly to settle this point,"
when it began to ascend, by short hops and flights, through the
branches, uttering a sharp, preliminary chirp. I followed it with my
eye; saw it mount into the air and circle over the woods; and saw it
sweep down again and dive through the trees, almost to the very perch
from which it had started.

As the paramount question in the life of a bird is the question of
food, perhaps the most serious troubles our feathered neighbors
encounter are early in the spring, after the supply of fat with which
Nature stores every corner and by-place of the system, thereby
anticipating the scarcity of food, has been exhausted, and the sudden
and severe changes in the weather which occur at this season make
unusual demands upon their vitality. No doubt many of the earlier
birds die from starvation and exposure at this season. Among a troop
of Canada sparrows which I came upon one March day, all of them
evidently much reduced, one was so feeble that I caught it in my hand.

During the present season, a very severe cold spell the first week in
March drove the bluebirds to seek shelter about the houses and
outbuildings. As night approached, and the winds and the cold
increased, they seemed filled with apprehension and alarm, and in the
outskirts of the city came about the windows and the doors, crept
beneath the blinds, clung to the gutters and beneath the cornice,
flitted from porch to porch, and from house to house, seeking in vain
from some safe retreat from the cold. The street pump, which had a
small opening just over the handle, was an attraction which they could
not resist. And yet they seemed aware of the insecurity of the
position; for no sooner would they stow themselves away into the
interior of the pump, to the number of six or eight, than they would
rush out again, as if apprehensive of some approaching danger. Time
after time the cavity was filled and refilled, with blue and brown
intermingled, and as often emptied. Presently they tarried longer than
usual, when I made a sudden sally and captured three, tha